The cbHasField snippet, distributed with the core ContentBlocks package, is a simple utility snippet that lets you check if a specific field is in use on a resource, and if that is the case (or if it's not), return a specific value. This is useful for loading field-specific resources or other tweaks you may want to make to a resource/template depending on the presence of a field.

By default it will check the current resource, however by passing a &resource property you can also run it for other resources. The cbHasField snippet should always be called cached.

Note: if you're using nested layouts, cbHasField does not currently check data from within nested layouts.

Snippet Usage

The snippet is super simple to use. Pass the field ID via the &field property, pass something you want returned if the field was used to the &then property, and pass a value to the &else property for when the field was not used.

[[cbHasField?
&field=`ID OF FIELD`
&then=`Something if the field was used`
&else=`Something else if the field was not used`
]]

The following properties are accepted:

&resource: defaults to the current resource, but pass this a resource ID if you want to run the check on a different resource.

&field: the ID of the field you want to make sure was used. The field ID can be found in the ContentBlocks component, it is between brackets after the field name.

&then: if the field was present, return whatever was passed to this property. If not set, this will return 1.

&else: if the field was not present, or the resource did not use ContentBlocks at all, return whatever was passed to this property. If not set, this will return an empty value.

Example: returning one of two chunks

Because of MODX' recursive parsing, it's important to use "tags as the result of tags" for when you want to return a chunk. While the following example will seem to work as expected, both chunks will have been parsed before the cbHasField snippet has been parsed and the right condition is used.